Journal · April 2026
Behind the poems
The moments, places, and feelings that called them into being.
Every poem in Echoes of an Unveiled Soul was born from something real — a wound that needed air, a memory that refused to stay quiet, a moment of grace too sacred to let pass. Here, I pull back the curtain.
Poem
“The Unveiling”
“I have carried versions of myself I never chose — today I set them down like stones at the river’s edge and walk in without looking back.”
This poem came to me at 2am, sitting on the floor of a room that no longer felt like mine. I had been holding onto an identity that was handed to me — one stitched together by other people’s expectations, old wounds, and the need to belong somewhere. The river in this poem is real. It runs through a place I return to whenever I need to remember who I actually am underneath all of that.
I wrote this one for anyone who has ever felt like a stranger in their own life. If that’s you — keep reading. The water is warm.
Identity · Healing
Poem
“What the Forest Keeps”
“The trees do not ask permission to grow toward the light. Neither, anymore, do I.”
I spent a summer walking trails I didn’t know the names of, just trying to breathe through something I couldn’t name yet. The natural world kept showing up as a mirror — patient, unhurried, indifferent to my chaos in the best possible way. Nature has a way of reminding you that most things sort themselves out if you stop strangling them.
This poem is about permission — the kind we spend years waiting for someone else to give us, not realizing it was always ours. I hope it makes you want to go outside and also, maybe, let something go.
Nature · Growth
Poem
“Collective Memory”
“We grieve things we never lived through — grief passed down like heirlooms, stitched into the body before we were born.”
This one surprised me. I started writing about my own family history and ended up writing about everyone’s. There’s a kind of grief that lives in the bones — grief for losses that happened before you arrived, for worlds you never saw but somehow mourn. I wanted to honor that inheritance without being crushed by it.
It’s one of the poems I’ve heard readers come back to most. Something about naming an unnamed thing seems to set it free — or at least makes it easier to carry.
Memory · Ancestry
Poem
“Sacred Ordinary”
“The sacred is not hidden in the extraordinary — it is pressed into the folds of Tuesday, waiting for you to notice.”
I wrote this poem on a completely unremarkable afternoon. Coffee going cold. Dogs at my feet. Light coming through the window at that angle that makes everything look a little holy. I thought — this. This is the thing people keep missing because they’re waiting for the big moments.
Gratitude isn’t a grand gesture. Sometimes it’s just slowing down long enough to notice what’s already there. I wanted to write something that gave people permission to find the divine in the utterly mundane. I hope it works.
Gratitude · Spirituality